The present disclosure relates to methods for defining specific business application models, and more particularly to a method for automating the selection of information technology (IT) components and other data sources to scan and/or analyze for collecting configuration data to define specific business application models.
In the context of IT asset management, there is a need to map IT components (e.g., servers, network switches, etc.) to business applications (e.g., payroll processing application, order-to-cash application) for purposes such as Configuration Management Database (CMDB) maintenance. The mapping of IT components to business applications is typically done by collecting configuration data from IT infrastructure components and documentation, for example by scanning IT infrastructure components and documents (e.g., change request documents). The configuration data can contain clues (e.g., name of a hosted database, server and business application mentioned in same incident ticket, etc.) that link IT components to business applications. The scanning is typically performed in a non-prioritized periodic fashion that wastes network bandwidth and processor cycles, particularly for tracking single business applications.